The Support Team

Hey all,

Recently I’ve had the thought of proposing that the Support Team be expanded upon - and be an included position for any applicant who may be interested. I see no reason why forum moderator applications weren’t being accepted in the first place - and it’d do the community good if they were being accepted.

The Support Team should also have forum moderation capabilities. It says on the Staff List that they do, but they do not (or maybe they have extremely limited powers, not sure), unfortunately. From a past experience I can safely say that the regular PMU Moderator has more forum powers than a Support Team Member does. Why can’t one be just a forum moderator and not an in-game one? I personally believe the forums should receive more attention than they do already, but with our Admins’ busy schedule that isn’t very possible at the current moment.

Seeing as how PTD has been the only member of the Support Team for quite a while (I think she was the only one?), means its time for some improvements.

I believe that firstly, for a few months, they should be given only global mod powers that include just: warn, IP grabbing, post approval and disapproval, post editing, and thread maintenance tools. After their trial or evaluation period expires, they should then be given the rest: banning/unbanning privileges and all that other good stuff.

Furthermore, as there is only one member of the Support Team, that kind of takes the whole “Team” part out.

Tl;dr - applications should be open for the support team for people who are interested in just staffing the forums, and the support team usergroup should be given more moderation privileges.

Thoughts?

Then theres me still waiting to see when staff app will be read :P

I actually think the support team should be eliminated, at least from what I can gather with your post.

I think it would be more efficient and better for this forum to have mods be Forum Mods and PMU game mods, so that way it better ties the Forums with the Game, which is what the forums are based on, yes? Theoretically you’d want your focus to be supplemented by what you have to offer. If your focus as a site is the PMU online game, then you’ll want the forums to supplement that. That’s not to say PMU online can’t supplement the forums any, they already do.And I’m not naive as to think that there aren’t positions on this site that only apply to the game. Such as a Coder maybe, but they wouldn’t have any forum administrative authority I don’t think.

Another reason why I think this would work better is that members tend to participate more in things that staff are involved in. If more staff play the PMU online game, then more users will tend to flock to the PMU game, because staff on most sites are seen as “celebrities”. Think about how awesome it would be for a new member to be able to hang out with a staff member on the game.

I know I might seem all over the place (typically I am sometimes. XD), but to summarize, just take away Support Team and have Mods moderate the game and the site. Have a team of maybe 6 mods? Have them rotate between forum and game, and make the lone support team member a mod. The support team sounds more like a development role than anything else anyway.

Hi, folks. Considering that I am the sole (the one and only) Support Team member, let me start by clarifying a few things.

Also, I’m not using size 85 font so I don’t break your eyes. If you folks have any other questions regarding what I do, feel free to post. Considering I practically live here, I’ll 100% see it.

Hey, Erica. What the heck do you do in the Support Team?

My job originally consisted of fixing up the forums based on this suggestion by PoochieHead. It was a simple series of touch ups, moving sub-forums, adding a handful of categories – stuff like that. After that was quickly finished, I stepped back and kept answer questions that new and old players have, locked threads on request, approved new posts, rejected spam-bot posts, stuff like that.

I have limited moderating powers, so I can lock a topic if it’s getting out of hand, but by no means am I an official moderator. Outside of closing down threads, I cannot ban anyone from the forums or officially warn them.

What powers do you have?

  • Limited access to the forum Admin panel.
    The extent of my powers only goes so far. I’m not allowed into anything outside of moving forums and renaming them.

  • Limited moderator powers.
    I can lock and unlock threads. I have access to the moderator panel. I can approve and disapprove new posts. Basic stuff like that.

That’s about it, really.

How “Staff” are you?

Since I never really applied, I’m a staff member only by name. I am not involved in anything involving the game or future staff members. I’m just a sort of background worker keeping the forums nice and neat.

How are you the only member of the Support Team?

The Support Team didn’t necessarily exist until the Summer of 2014. I had been an avid forum lurker and Flare invited me to fulfill the requirements of PoochieHead’s forum overhaul suggestion. I asked for moderating powers one day, got my request partially accepted, and I’ve been doing this ever since.

My main job, which is to answer a variety of questions (ranging from “where can I recruit this Pokemon?” to “why isn’t my BB code working?”) can be done by any user, staff or not, who has a reasonable amount of knowledge about the game and the forums. Moderating is most definitely not my main focus. The fact that my obligations are not necessarily tied to staff powers is probably why this isn’t an applicable position.

Do you think this position should exist?

I’m glad I can take care of various situations on here and have an access to a handful of moderator associated tools. This means I don’t have to constantly bug anyone over Skype to do something that shouldn’t take more than five minutes.

However, I don’t use my moderator powers on a regular basis (outside of accepting new user posts). And considering I finished what I had originally been invited for, I’m not sure if this should be an open position or a position at all. It would be interesting as a trial position for to-be-Moderators, but that’s simply an idea and something out of my control.

hello pmu peeps and forum bots,
hope you are all having a fine day. :)

you see friends, the position called “moderator” in-game isn’t just moderating the game itself. it means testing new dungeons, helping players when their stories crash or bosses don’t spawn, hosting or helping out with weekly events, reporting account/character related issues to admins and being test subjects for senior staff. most mods also help out with other things such as story writing or developing graphics like sprites. as such they usually don’t have time to check the forum very often which led to poor forum maintenance. which is why this general position exists in the first place.

also,
we don’t have a lot of moderators as such because:

  • promotions happen rarely (from player to mod)
  • most mods get promoted to mapper or other positions very soon because of the demand of content and limited capabilities of mod position.

so it makes sense (to me at least) why a support position exists. the position was handed by staff themselves, but if you have an interest in such a position it wouldn’t do much harm to contact staff.

thanks
your lover,
festivo
:*

Have staff even started reading the staff applications from like 2-3 months ago or still WIP? :joy:

Generally if its been a little over a month since the initial application submission, it was rejected. Most likely is if no response was received within that amount of time (2-3 months).

This isn’t the place to discuss that though. You should ask a staff via PM or Skype.

Thanks for your opinions everyone. I strongly feel that the Support Team should have open applications just like the in-game positions do. Some people would love to just moderate the forum by itself (whether it be just using the powers Erica has; approving and disapproving posts is a great help for example).

I believe the general Support Team recruit should also have super moderator privileges (or, put simply, share the PMU Moderator groups privileges) at FIRST, and then be given access to Mapper+ forum privileges after an allotted time.

Theres definitely no question about what Festivo said - as a PMU Staff Member in-game you’re almost always busy with something, whether you’re a Mod or Mapper+. Strictly with Mappers though, you just dont find the time to moderate the forums as much as you (or the community) would like.

A team for forum moderation PRIMARILY would be a great way to contribute to the forum. Right now the forum doesn’t get much attention because of how busy our admins are; but I know that if the Support Team was expanded on and open just like all of the other positions, it’d be a step in the right direction.